


Peridot is the Colour of Warmth

by Elenothar



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Dealing With Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e01 Into the Fire, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Slash, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 08:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15659829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/pseuds/Elenothar
Summary: At this point 'Hathor' may as well be synonymous with 'aftermath'.Episode tag for Into the Fire.





	Peridot is the Colour of Warmth

 

 

*

 

They congregate in Daniel’s VIP quarters in silence, instinctively seeking the closeness of a team reunited. It should be old news by now: _I’m sorry, your team didn’t make it_ _._ They’d all thought it often enough over the last couple of years, with Daniel the most likely culprit, but Jack can’t quite shake the empty feeling those words had left behind, and judging by the way Teal’c’s eyes have yet to stray from them since they made it back through the gate, the way Carter keeps brushing against his arm, Daniel’s side, Teal’c’s hand, and Daniel’s fingers keep twitching for them, neither can the rest of his team.

 

Frasier wouldn’t let Daniel leave the base, no matter his protestations that ‘it’s just a scratch’ (“12 stitches, Daniel, _twelve_ ”), but allowed him to stay in one of the overnight rooms if he promised to behave himself. One thing led to another, and here they all are; Daniel grudgingly lying in bed, eyes wide open despite the bone-deep weariness telegraphed by the lines around his eyes, Teal’c sitting cross-legged on the floor as he usually does for kel-no-reem, though Jack would bet good money he’s in no such state of serenity right now, Carter perching on one of the borderline uncomfortable chairs, hair in disarray, and Jack himself pacing the room. There’s a jitter deep beneath his skin and he can’t seem to keep himself still. Whenever he stops moving, a band tightens around his chest, an echo of the way the cryo-tube-whatsit kept him still for the snake like a lamb led to slaughter. When he’s moving he can pretend he isn’t still shivering, though his skin has long since warmed to normal body temperature again. And he’d thought fucking Antarctica was bad.

 

Any other time someone would’ve told him to knock it off by now, and he kind of wishes someone _would_ , just to inject some normalcy into the entire affair.

 

“Jack, get over here before you drive us all insane,” Daniel says, and even though his voice lacks the usual annoyance at Jack’s antics, Jack almost smiles. Good old Daniel.

 

Good old Daniel who has been walking around with a worrying, almost vacant expression on his face ever since Hathor revealed herself – not that anyone can blame the guy – and while some of that may have been his desire not to show weakness in front of her, to not let her use his regard for Jack and Sam against them, Jack would eat his favourite ball cap if the underlying cause didn’t have much more to do with what that bitch had done to Daniel the first time around than anything else.

 

For a long, hot second he wishes fiercely that Daniel had been there when Jack had killed the snake, had heard her scream and her fear in the face of death, but that’s a thought worthy of Jack the soldier not Daniel the explorer and he pushes it aside.

 

Before his brain can catch up to them, his legs have carried him to Daniel’s bed, and when he hesitates at the foot, probably looking like some kind of idiot, Daniel reaches out a hand to tug him onto the duvet, then pushes one of the extra blankets onto Jack’s lap without a word. Daniel’s leg is warm at his hip and if they both derive comfort from this Jack is more than happy to play along.

 

Jack considers glaring at him just for the sake of it – he’s going to box himself into a future corner if he allows this level of mother-henning now – but he can’t quite muster the energy. The blanket is rough and warm when he pushes it over his legs, and it hides the faint tremble of his fingers.

 

When he looks up from his fussing, Teal’c is watching him with dark eyes, a hint of an approving smile on his lips as he dips his head in understanding.

 

Carter though...

 

“How often does that make it?” Carter says, sounding almost dreamy. Jack frowns at her – this kind of abstracted look isn’t normal for her at all. Maybe it’s not Daniel he should be worrying about the most after all.

 

Daniel shifts on the bed. “Hmm?”

 

“How often have we thought one of us was dead?” Carter elaborates, still sounding as if she isn’t questioning anything more involved than the weather.

 

Jack winces. The number is engraved in his brain – the deaths, the almost-deaths, the pseudo-deaths, he remembers them all in vivid technicolour, even when he wishes he didn’t. He’s just about to open his mouth to head off this particular discussion, when Carter continues.

 

“I don’t think we’ve thought everyone else on the team dead before – ”

 

Daniel holds up a hand. “Um, wrong. When I gated back in from Apophis’ ship I thought you’d all died in the explosion.”

 

“And I watched all of you die on the planet of the Nox,” Teal’c contributes.

 

Jack closes his eyes. He’d been the first to go on that one and pathetically grateful for it at the time, despite the inherent failure.

 

Carter nods. “Good point.”

 

Jack stares at her. _Good point?_

 

“Then there were all the times we thought Daniel was dead – on Nem’s planet”

 

\- Daniel leans over to whisper ‘sushi guy’ into Jack’s ear, as if he’s imparting a secret, as if Jack is ever going to forget the name of the alien who made them believe Daniel had died a fiery death -

 

“then later on Apophis’ ship, the quantum mirror, and when he got buried in that rockfall on Shyla’s planet.”

 

“Teal’c and I thought you and Jack were dead during the Antarctica gate odyssey,” Daniel chimes in, though Jack suspects that has more to do with wanting to get off the topic of his own deaths than anything else. Daniel slants him an apologetic look when Jack’s reflexive shiver travels into his own leg, but carries on. “And we thought you were dead when you refused to leave Cassie in that bunker, and when Jolinar saved your life. Jack died when _Hathor_ ” - and here he shivers himself, all but spitting the name - “invaded the SGC, and Teal’c’s robot double died. We thought he might be dead when he got stung by that bug too. All of you were dead or about to die in the parallel universe. And then there was the time all of the Ancients’ knowledge got downloaded into Jack’s brain.”

 

“Indeed,” Teal’c says. “We have come close to death many times.”

 

Carter has finally lost her vacant gaze and now looks faintly sick. “Our track record really isn’t good, is it?”

 

It’s hard to argue with. As the team leader, Jack knows he should say something, _anything_ encouraging right about now, but he’s sick and tired of watching his team mates die himself, and it’s not like Carter is _wrong_.

 

It’s Teal’c who comes to his rescue. “And yet,” he says, slowly, measured, as if weighing every word, “we are all here, sound in body.”

 

Hard to argue with, is their man Teal’c.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Over the next few days, Jack’s office mysteriously acquires a fuzzy, sinfully soft and warm comforter in a pleasant green colour he’s later informed is called ‘peridot’ because only his team could come up with something so absurdly specific and he almost laughs. More often than not, a warm drink is pushed in his hands before briefings, in Daniel’s office, in Carter’s lab, even when he’s just walking down a hallway. General Hammond turns a thoroughly blind eye when Jack turns up on base in his heaviest parka because he can’t stop feeling the cold creep down his spine and into his bones. The first time he visibly freezes when someone claps him on the shoulder and pain shoots through the mostly healed scar at the base of his neck, activity in the room pauses and resumes before he can do more than blink. No one brings it up again. When Siler accidentally nudges him high in the shoulder with some doodad he’s carrying to the gate room and Jack ends up with his back to the wall, breathing heavily and refusing to meet the startled Sergeant’s eyes, he finds an edible fruit bouquet in his office a few hours later – no card, but he knows who it’s from, not that Siler needed to apologise for Jack’s own damn jumpiness in the first place. He makes it a point to drop by the technicians’ haunt on level 17 the next day, has a nice chat about the ongoing hockey season with Siler and lends his hand to some repairs that don’t need any particular expertise beyond sure fingers – there are always repairs going on somewhere in the SGC, it might as well be a constant of the universe – listens to the bustle around him and doesn’t remember to feel cold until he hass left again.

 

Teal’c seems to find his even keel the quickest of them all, to no one’s surprise. He seeks them out a little more often than usual, asks each of them in turn to sit with him while he kel-no-reems once (Jack sits between the small pinpricks of warmth from many candles, doesn’t even try to clear his mind, but lends his presence freely), and then he seems to be back to his old self again, the quiet bulwark of strength they are all used to. Jack doubts its quite that simple, but it’s easy to forget that Teal’c is old compared to them, and usually wiser than his quiet might indicate. If there are fault-lines in him, he keeps them closed and small with an expert hand.

 

Carter takes a little longer. Their supposed death followed by Jack’s goulding shook her hard, though at least it’s offset by her active role in getting Jack de-popsicled and blowing up the shield generator. She oscillates wildly between holing up in her lab and seemingly forgetting that anything not related to whatever mind-bending work she’s doing this week actually exists, and searching them out for company. Between her and Daniel, Jack has played more games of chess in a week than in the last several years, the commissary is out of blue jell-o and the little space heater that’s been in Jack’s office since their trip down the Antarctic rabbit hole is about 200% more efficient to the point that Jack barely has to turn it on for it to be doing a pretty convincing impression of an erupting volcano. He would worry more about the fact that she doesn’t seem to have slept off base at all since they came back if that wasn’t pretty standard Carter MO when she gets stuck on some experiment. Still, when he practically orders her to get herself home and make sure her place hasn’t been burgled and she actually does as he says with only a limited amount of arguing, he breathes a quiet sigh of relief. When she comes back the next day, actually looking rested and not like she’d spent half the night tossing and turning because of nightmares, he knows she’s past the worst.

 

It’s Daniel who’s the problem child. Again.

 

Like Carter, Daniel throws himself into work when he’s hurting. That’s more or less fine by Jack – he’s not exactly a stranger to that coping strategy himself. Unlike Carter (this time), Daniel doesn’t seem to be able to pull himself out of it and Jack knows for a fact that the rock he’s currently working on isn’t _that_ fascinating. He lets it go for a few days. Daniel shows no sign of going home or even attempting to sleep properly. Jack gives it another couple of days. Daniel starts shading towards mania but not towards a bed. Mentally throwing up his hands in defeat on the eighth day, Jack decides enough is enough and goes to dig Daniel out of his office. With Daniel, the trick is not to give him a chance to argue, so his plan of attack is simple: march in and drag Daniel out to his jeep and off base by his perpetually rumpled collar if necessary.

 

Step one goes off perfectly. That is to say Jack stalks into Daniel’s office, shuts down the man’s computer and steers him out of the door with a firm hand before Daniel’s sleep-deprived brain has allowed him to do much more than blink like a very confused owl.

 

Step two (get out of the mountain) and three (get the stroppy archaeologist into the jeep) are mired in the return of Daniel’s language function, particularly in the closed elevator where Daniel makes his displeasure unambiguously known, but Jack perseveres, aided by the fact that while Daniel is complaining loudly and at length, he’s either too physically tired to struggle, can’t be bothered, or deep down actually wants to leave with Jack.

 

He’s hoping for slot three – the complaining continues, but Jack can spot rote when he hears it, and he knows that Daniel is just as liable to throw up linguistic smoke-screens as Jack himself is when he doesn’t want someone to get a peek at the truth.

 

Step four (gather information) is a dismal failure.

 

“My place or yours?” he asks, relaxed hands on the steering wheel belying how much he’s probably going to read into the answer. Except no answer comes, and that’s probably the most meaningful at all. Daniel is staring out the truck window, watching the trees on the roadside as if he’s never seen one before.

 

“My place it is,” Jack says cheerily and turns right instead of left. Daniel doesn’t protest.

 

He also doesn’t protest when Jack leads him into the house, then into the guest bedroom, untouched since the last time Daniel had stayed over. Jack had contemplated getting the talk he knows has to happen out of the way first thing, but it hadn’t taken anything more than Daniel teetering in the doorway in obvious exhaustion for him to reconsider. The pep talk can come later – right now Daniel needs sleep more than he needs words. For once.

 

Daniel seems to agree. Still silent, he takes off his glasses and crawls under the covers without even taking his clothes off, heedless of Jack still standing at the foot of the bed. Or perhaps _because_ Jack is standing at the foot of the bed.

 

 

 

The morning, Jack’s pretty sure, comes too quickly for both of their tastes. Jack wakes with the antsy feeling of the impending conversation already crawling across his skin. He hadn’t woken himself up with nightmares at least, though his sleep hadn’t exactly been peaceful either.

 

Daniel, ever predictable, shuffles into the kitchen when the smell of coffee starts wafting through the house, looking only slightly less like someone who just won an olympic gold medal in insomnia.

 

Jack, who has better survival instincts than some people give him credit for, silently pushes a full mug towards Daniel and settles himself down on the couch with the morning newspaper, tuning out the sounds of Daniel slurping his way through his first dose of caffeine of the day with the ease of long practice.

 

Two cups and a move towards the spot next to Jack on the couch later, it’s Daniel who breaks the silence. “Get on with it then. I’m sure you have a lot of questions prepared.”

 

Slowly, deliberately, Jack lowers the newspaper. Daniel still sounds tired, a slight rasp to his normally smooth voice, but his face is set in stubborn lines that make it clear there’s no point in delaying further. It would’ve been too much to expect him not to guess at some of Jack’s motivation for towing him out of the mountain.

 

“No questions,” he says. “Just this: Hathor is dead. I wasn’t just saying that to stall her Jaffa, did it with my own two hands. She’s 100 percent and ex-snake.”

 

Daniel reads between the lines as he always does, unless military etiquette is concerned. The short-haired look is weird on him – not bad, but weird. Jack still half expects hair to be flying when Daniel shakes his head.

 

“Seeing Hathor again wasn’t the worst thing that happened, Jack.” Daniel’s eyes glint in the half-light. His voice doesn’t waver. “Seeing you taken as a host was far worse.”

 

One of these days the reflexive cold shiver won’t annoy the hell out of Jack. Preferably because it stops happening, not because he got used to it. “Ah. That.”

 

“Yes _that_. That thing you’re _not_ dealing with like a champ, that you’re ignoring by focusing all your energy on me.”

 

Jack crosses his arms, neck prickling. “I’m dealing just fine.”

 

Daniel’s expression ices over and his mouth thins into a line. Then he stretches out a hand towards Jack’s neck. It’s not even a fast motion, and still Jack can’t quite stop the reflexive twitch. At least it’s not a full-blown flinch this time. He’s had enough of flinching.

 

“Point taken,” he murmurs, heart gone deadly calm inside his chest. “Except… what point _were_ you trying to make here, Daniel? That we’re all headcases after two years of this shit? Hell, two days of going through the gate caused enough trauma to last any sane person a lifetime.”

 

And just like that Daniel deflates. “You’re not wrong about that.”

 

Jack studies him silently for a few moments, already missing the glint of nasty steel Daniel had just shown. “So maybe I’m not over it yet. Fine. That has nothing to do with this. You’re my _friend_. Do you just expect me to stand by and do nothing while you eat yourself up from the inside?”

 

“What about Sam and Teal’c? I don’t see you looming over them.”

 

_That_ is Daniel stalling. “Carter and Teal’c are fine,” Jack says, with considerable patience. “Dealing, anyway. Worried about us, probably.”

 

“Fewer hang-ups,” Daniel mumbles.

 

Jack isn’t at all sure that’s correct, but leaves it for the moment.

 

“ _I’m_ also getting there. Stopped wearing parkas to work and everything. Haven’t heard any complaints about my office resembling a sauna for days now.” Jack keeps his gaze trained on Daniel’s face, carefully scrutinises the micro-expressions chasing themselves over his friend’s face. “ _You_ , however, seem to have forgotten sleep and regular food are a necessity for us squishy humans. You haven’t talked to Carter, Teal’c or me about anything more important than what the commissary is serving in a week.”

 

Daniel’s eyes flash. “Is Hammond asking?”

 

Jack gives him his best _duh_ look. “That’s not why I’m _here_. I’ve given you time, I’ve given you space, but I need to draw a line somewhere. For all our sakes. And if that means getting you to talk about my brief occupation by the galaxy’s would-be snake overlords, then that’s what I’ll do.”

 

If Jack knows Daniel at all, his flinch is a good sign – Daniel let him see it.

 

“Not pulling your punches today, are you Jack?” Daniel sighs, staring straight ahead at the dark screen of Jack’s TV.

 

He doesn’t say anything else. Neither does Jack. He can wait Daniel out all night, if he has to.

 

Finally Daniel says, voice tightly controlled, “You already know that being taken as a host is my, well, my greatest nightmare and that goes double for seeing those I care about taken. Sha’re...”

 

His voice breaks and Jack nods silently, nudges a little closer in the only kind of gesture of support Daniel will accept right now. Understanding or sympathetic words would only put his hackles up.

 

“But _you_? If there were a list of people I couldn’t live through being taken over by a Goa’uld, you’d have the top of that list cornered.”

 

Jack’s breath arrests in his chest. This, he hadn’t expected. This goes deeper than Daniel’s all too understandable hatred of the Goa’uld. “Why me?”

 

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re my best friend?” Despite the words, there’s no rancour in Daniel’s voice. “Or maybe it’s the fact that being snaked would kill you just as surely as a bullet to the brain.”

 

That mirrors some of Jack’s own thoughts a little too closely, but he still has to ask. “How d’you figure?”

 

“You’d hang yourself with honour, as willingly as not,” Daniel says and surprising bitterness laces his voice. “Having your body overtaken, outside of your control, made to perform acts you would never _ever_ condone and having to watch it all from somewhere trapped inside? It would kill you. You wouldn’t want to rationalise it, wouldn’t want to let go of the inevitable guilt.” He turns to Jack then, eyes cold with a fear Jack can’t soothe. “Deny it if you want, but it’s the truth.”

 

There’s no point in even trying – Daniel knows it just as well as Jack himself does, and Jack has only ever been a liar of necessity. He doesn’t think that either denial or agreement are what Daniel _needs_ to hear right now, but it takes him a moment to find the alternative. Easy, straightforward truth.

 

“It didn’t happen, Daniel. I’m still here.”

 

Daniel stares at him. “That’s a lousy reassurance.”

 

“Well, you know me, always ready with a comforting lie.” The switch between teasing and sober comes more naturally the other way round, but sober he does. “Best I can do. Best anyone can do while we’re de facto at war.”

 

“That’s all there is? It didn’t happen and if we’re lucky it won’t happen in the future?”

 

Jack stands, ignores the near-silent popping of his knees as he straightens. “That and having each other’s backs. It’s what got us through this time, it’ll be what keeps getting us through in the future. And as someone who has your back, I’m telling you to get some food into your stomach and then go back to sleep.”

 

And Daniel, miracle of miracles, nods.

 

 

*

 

 

General Hammond summons Jack to his office the next day, expression unusually grim. Though the getting down to business immediately part is fairly standard for him.

 

“Is SG-1 going to be field-worthy again?”

 

Jack leans back in his chair, resisting the urge to tap his fingers on the armrests. “Shouldn’t you be asking the docs that?”

 

“Doctor Frasier has cleared you all physically, and Doctor Mackenzie states that your psychological evaluations ‘went as expected’. I suspect that doesn’t mean he thinks you’re all entirely of sound mind, but he isn’t submitting a request to keep you grounded.”

 

Jack’s smile is all teeth. “Nice of him.”

 

Hammond’s eyes are serious. Jack gets the impression that if the General had glasses he would be peering over them at Jack, gaze critical and assessing. “Colonel, I won’t hesitate to stand SG-1 down for an indeterminate time if that’s what you recommend. I’m not going to risk a team going through the gate before they’re ready.” His voice softens slightly. “Lord knows you’ve had a rough time of it recently.”

 

Jack does him the courtesy of taking a minute to think it over. Yep, Hathor had screwed with them in a major way, but they’d all picked themselves and each other up. A little dented, some more of the already thin shine worn off, but as ready now as they would be in another few weeks. And that’s not even taking the potential wider effects of SG-1 being put on stand-down into account.

 

“Sir, we’re all aware how many lives it cost to get us out of there.” His lips twist into a sardonic smile. “Impossible to tell now whether the rescue operation will turn out to have been the correct choice strategically, but SG-1 sitting on the sidelines isn’t going to help with this war. And we haven’t found Sha’re and Skaara yet either.”

 

“The rest of your team agrees with you?”

 

Jack shrugs. “Haven’t talked about it. I can get verbal confirmation if you want it, sir, but I’m pretty damned sure they do.”

 

Hammond nods curtly. “Good enough for me. I’ll get you back onto the active mission roster at the end of this week.” He waves in dismissal, then speaks again before Jack can get up from his slouch. “And Colonel? Strategic decision or not, we don’t leave anyone behind.”

 

This time Jack’s smile is small but real. “Yes, sir.”

 

He stands, nods at Hammond and exits the office with as close to a spring in his step as he’s had in a while. He has a team barbecue to prepare.


End file.
